My Name Is Clark
by Baldwin Hart
Summary: Someday, somehow, the battle will end - Superman will die, and humanity will learn to fly on its own.


"Do you believe in yourself?"

It wasn't the first time he'd asked the question today, but like before, he didn't expect much of an answer - not from a half-dead Kryptonian struggling to even breathe.

"I've always wondered that. The world looks up to you - struggles to meet your expectations. They see you fly, and feel small beneath you. They want nothing more than to rise to your level, as if... as if they owed you something. As if they owed you their lives."

Wheezing, Kal-El fought the crippling Earth gravity to sit up, impossibly weighed down by a pair of weighted steel shackles around his arms. The air stung his eyes, burned in his lungs like he'd just inhaled a fistful of glass. Try as might to focus on the Luthor's speech, the words were little more than murmurs in his bloody ears, accented by the occasional pop of a super-human eardrum.

"I can't imagine you could ever truly understand the impact you've made - not while the sun burned yellow, and gave you the strength to pass judgment over us all. You can't understand what it means to me to see human beings look at a creature like you as the greatest hope for a better tomorrow."

The beginnings of a morning fog swept over the Daily Planet's rooftop, dabbing Kal-El's mouth with enough moisture to keep him from swallowing his tongue. The moon had vanished behind thick green clouds; the sun would rise soon.

"They're so easily fooled by your smiles, your spit-curls and colorful costumes...but they never stop to think how few of you are truly human. They never stop and think that the better tomorrow they're hoping for isn't for them - it's for you. It's for Martians, Kryptonians, Amazons..."

Numb from the past day's beatings, Kal-El's shattered legs now felt like they'd always been this way. His eyes were so swollen he could only just make out the sliver of red-orange on the horizon that meant the final day had begun.

"Not anymore, alien. Not anymore. I knew you'd find a way out of the Phantom Zone eventually. It only took a year to produce enough green-K serum to saturate the city's water table. You wasted your strength, battling Zod for what felt like an eternity, only to return to a world where the very air is poison to you, where every plant, every raindrop, every boy and girl is _killing _you. But still..."

Clad in one of his older battle armor designs, Luthor casually scanned the alien's vitals, happily counting the seconds between labored heartbeats as the sun rose to light the Man of Steel's final hours in a bloody crimson.

"You have _hope_, don't you? Honest as you are, your forced humility never fooled me. You believe in your own myth as much as _they _do, and somewhere in that sickly, _broken _body, you think you've got the strength to _beat _me. How dare you."

The Planet's cracked globe shimmered in the red light, distorting Luthor's sensors with its deep red reflections. Funneling power to an arm-mounted fusion cannon, he put aside his tirade momentarily to melt down the last symbol of truth Metropolis had left. Wild arcs of green and violet struck out from his gauntlet, rendering alloys down to their simplest elements, showering the roof with bronze dust that made it even harder for Kal-El to draw his last breaths.

"How dare you even _entertain _the idea of me losing to you now."

"...not me..."

"What?"

"...the world...will save..._itself_."

"It already has. You're going to die by the hand of every man, woman, and child in Metropolis today. Humanity is taking back control. I'm taking back control."

"You're - "

Coughs. Blood. Streaks of green glow amidst the red. The air is thick with it.

"You're no more human than I am, Lex. And when I'm gone, the world won't settle for prison uniforms and expensive jail cells. You'll face justice - _true _justice - and I won't be here to save _you _from _them_."

Were it not for his face shield, Luthor's eyes would tell a different story than the swagger and aggressive posturing - the alien's words rang true, and for the briefest of moments, Lex Luthor, champion of humanity, felt a single, fleeting moment of doubt.

"Boy scout to the end, eh, Superman?"

An output gauge lit up on Luthor's heads-up display - fusion cannon primed.

"My name...is Clark."

Pushing the fear out of mind, he mustered his resolve and fired, claiming his final, glorious victory in the quiet first minutes of Metropolis' new dawn.

"_Was_."


End file.
